Counsel to Missionaries en Route to Africa
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under all circumstances, all counselling together with much earnest
prayer to God for His wisdom. There must be union of effort. There
is much that will have to be planned for. Therefore, the necessity for
perfect unity among yourselves. As a people we must march under
our own standard.
Wherever, in reforms, we can connect with others in the countries
to which we go, it will be advisable to do so, but there are some things
you must do within yourselves, working in the armour which God has
given you—not the armour of any one individual, but working together
in Christian charity and love. Let not any one of you belittle the
importance of your mission, and lower the work by a cheap, inferior
way of planning to get the truth before the people.
Work intelligently, wisely, unitedly. Let no special effort be made
to magnify the men, but magnify the Lord, and let Him be your fear,
your dread, and your sufficiency. Bring your minds up to the greatness
of the work. Your narrow plans, your limited ideas, are not to come
into your methods of working. There must be reform on this point, and
there will be more means brought in to enable the work to be brought
up to the high and exalted position it should ever occupy. There will
be men who have means who will discern something of the character
of the work, although they have not the courage to lift the cross, and
to bear the reproach that attends unpopular truth. First reach the high
classes if possible, but there should be no neglect of the lower classes.
But it has been the case that the plans and the efforts have been so
shaped in many fields that the lower classes only are the ones who can
be reached. But methods may be devised to reach the higher classes
who need the light of truth as well as the lower classes. These see
the truth, but they are, as it were, in the slavery of poverty, and see
starvation before them should they accept the truth. Plan to reach the
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best classes, and you will not fail to reach the lower classes. There
is altogether too much of putting the light under the bed or under the
bushel, and not on a candle-stick, that it may give light to all that are
in the house. May the Lord give the workers true wisdom, and much
of His Holy Spirit, that they may work in God’s order, and may stand
as high as possible in favour with God and with the people.
The Lord gave special directions in the arrangement of the encamp-
ment of the Israelites in regard to how the camp should be arranged.
All was to be done with perfect order. Each man had his appointed